


No Promise of Tomorrow

by sheriffandsteel



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gendrya - Freeform, ansgt, the zombie AU no one asked me for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 02:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20036398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheriffandsteel/pseuds/sheriffandsteel
Summary: She’d had a name once, what had it been? It seemed the fog had taken that too. She didn’t really need a ride, she didn’t have anywhere to go, but her feet were sore and her body tired. That wasn’t even including the army of wights he surely had following him and that noise. As far as she was concerned a ride was the least he could do for her.





	No Promise of Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> I started working on the prompts for gendrya week and then this happened.

She couldn’t remember how it happened, that was the thing that would stick out to her the most in the coming years. That was what would draw her from the fog she constantly lived under, if only for a few minutes. She would wake from it in brief moments of clarity and look at the remains of what passed for her life and realize she couldn’t remember how she had gotten there. 

There was no reason to keep track of time anymore, all you could do was just hope that you got more of it. What was the point of keeping track of the hour, the month, the year when all you were doing was hoping you got another minute, got to see one more sunrise. She didn’t bother keeping track of how much time had passed since everything had gone to shit. She only knew that time was passing because of how there were less and less people around her until there was only her left. 

If she was asked, she wouldn’t be able to say how long she had been on her own. How long had it been since Syrio (her teacher, her friend, the very reason she was even still breathing) had fallen and left her alone? Nine days? Four years? It was hard to say. Remembering didn’t do her any good, all it did was take her mind off of survival and that was something that could not happen. If she lost her footing out here, she would never get back up again. 

Sometimes the fog would lift enough to remind her that she never burned Syrio’s body. She never had the chance. She would see figures moving in the shadows that were his built and she would tense, certain that this ghost had finally come back to haunt her. 

For a while after he was gone there were things that made her think back to the past, back to before, but she tried hard to ignore them. It did not matter who she used to be, that girl was long gone. There was no one left to remember her and so that was who she had become as well, No One. 

It was easier being No One than it had been being herself. No One did not grieve. No One did not feel fear, not like the girl she used to be did. She pretended to be brave for so long that one day she woke to find that she was. Or at the very least the fear was gone, and really didn’t that come down to the same thing? 

It took her a very long time to realize that yes, the fear was gone, but with it had left everything else. 

Her days passed in a continuous blend of walking, sometimes running, and scraping up whatever food and water she could. There used to be so many rules that she was forced to live by but now there was only one; keep moving. Staying still meant death and she was determined to not meet him yet. 

One day in late autumn, judging by the chill and the bright leaves scattered on the ground, something new happened. She was walking by the road; dangerous she knew but she was tired and she had twisted her ankle the other day jumping a fence. The asphalt, cracked as it was, was easier than fighting her way across the forest floor. 

She didn’t bother to stop, just slowed her pace enough to cast a look back over her shoulder. There was a motorcycle approaching her swiftly, a lone figure astride it. Even though it felt strange to do so she forced her feet to stop and turned to face the bike, drawing the thin sword she wore at her belt as she did so. 

The sound of the bike’s engine was deafening in her ears and she knew that anything within hearing distance would chasing after that sound. She willed her feet to move but they stood rooted in place. After so long of not seeing another living person curiosity was winning out. 

It seemed she was not the only one because the motorcycle slowed to a stop in front of her only a few feet away. The rider was a man with arms as large as tree branches and a black helmet obscuring his face. There was a large decal of a bull on one side. 

For a long moment the only sound between them was the roar of the bike’s engine and with every passing second, she grew more and more anxious. Things would be upon them at any moment now and she did not want to be around when they did. She needed to get a move on and find somewhere safe to hide. It would be dark soon and unlike her the things that would chase her did not need light to see by. 

“What are you doing out here?” The man’s voice wasn’t as deep as she was expecting and it held a bitter edge to it, like this was his road and she was trespassing on it. 

She didn’t bother to answer him, choosing instead to keep her eyes trained on the darkness of his visor as she tried to hear over the roar of the engine for running footsteps. 

“I’m Gendry. What’s your name?” he asked when it became clear she wasn’t going to respond to his question. She was a bit surprised he had bother to ask her another one and hadn’t just ridden off and left her to deal with the consequences of his bike’s noise. 

She’d had a name once, what had it been? It seemed the fog had taken that too. She shrugged once and hoisted her bag higher up on her shoulder, casting a pointed look to the back of his bike. She didn’t really need a ride, she didn’t have anywhere to go, but her feet were sore and her body tired. That wasn’t even including the army of wights he surely had following him and that noise. As far as she was concerned a ride was the least he could do for her. The bike would let her rest and keep moving at the same time. 

Gendry hesitated and looked at her closer and she wondered what it was he was seeing. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her reflection. She had never cared much for what she looked like but she’d known a girl years ago who would spend hours sitting in front of the mirror and styling her hair. She could remember the fiery color of her hair but the face that was underneath it was only shadows. 

She wasn’t sure what was worse, the ghosts or the shadows. 

“Just remember, if you stab me, I crash the bike and we both die.” Gendry said gruffly, casting a look around them like he too was searching for monsters. 

She sheathed her sword and didn’t bother to point out that she could just stab him before he took off and take the bike from him. A ride was a ride and at least this way she didn’t have to turn her back on him. She climbed onto the motorcycle behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist as he gunned the engine. The bulky backpack he was wearing dug into her chest as he took off down the road again. 

She only bothered to look over her shoulder once and at the sight of several wights running after them she spared enough thought to hoping that the bike didn’t run out of gas anytime soon before she clenched her arms tighter around Gendry and let her mind drift off to as close to sleep as she got these days. 

XxX 

They didn’t talk about it but somehow, they found themselves staying together. She thought about leaving several times, especially that first night when they finally stopped and holed up in an old diner. She took first watch and when he fell asleep, she debated taking his belongings and the bike and leaving him behind. He would never catch her with her on the wheels. 

As she was thinking this she looked over at his face lit by a swatch of moonlight coming through the boarded-up windows. He was much younger than she had thought he would be, he couldn’t be more than five or six years older than she was, not that she knew how old that was anymore. For some reason she had been expecting him to be older, to have the lines around his eyes like her father had once had. 

She hadn’t thought of her father in years and even such a small remembrance felt like he was there, watching out for her. Remembering him felt like he was there with her, resting his hand on her head like he used to and telling her to stay. To stay with this strange man because there was safety in numbers. 

So, she stayed. 

Time blurred together again the only thing marking the passage was the day they found another motorcycle abandoned under a bunch of tree branches. It took Gendry an hour to get it working and they had to take gas out of his bike to do so but they made it work. The sound of just one motorcycle had been deafening but the roar of both made her want to cover her ears with her hands. It was ear-splitting. 

She didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle. He had never bothered to teach her, she suspected so that she could not steal the bike from him. Perhaps Gendry wasn’t as trusting as she had originally thought. She only fell twice when he taught her and they made it far enough to get into a small town where they managed to scrounge up some more gas and food. The more empty towns they passed through the more she felt like her and Gendry were the only two people left alive. 

Gendry must have felt the same way because even though she had yet to say a word in his presence, or really since the day she had screamed herself hoarse as she watched Syrio get ripped apart, he asked her a question every single day. Sometimes he asked her if she wanted to keep riding, others it was if she wanted to turn left or right. Eventually he learned there was no point in asking her questions she could nod yes or no to or simply point to her answer. So, he began to ask her questions that required a real answer, like where she was from or what she did before the world ended. His favorite question to ask her was for her name. 

She didn’t know how to tell him that she couldn’t give him her name because she couldn’t remember what it was. No One didn’t have a name, that was the whole point. But No One shouldn’t have a father and she was beginning to remember more of him each night. He came to her in the few fitful hours of sleep she managed to steal. Some nights he was alive and whole and others he was not. She wasn’t sure which dreams were worse. 

One night, Gendry and her sat back to back in a small cabin they had stumbled upon off an unpaved road that was probably far too dangerous to ride a motorcycle on but they’d had to take an unexpected detour. Her sword rested on her knees, unsheathed and ready to be swung at a moment’s notice. She kept her eyes trained on the boarded-up door while Gendry watched the one window that they had shoved a cabinet in front of with a large hammer in his hands. 

The only sound between them was that of their breathing which they were both trying to keep quiet to listen to the world outside the cabin. Gendry’s whisper suddenly cut through the silence. “What's your name?” 

For the first time the question annoyed her, she was used to him wanting to know what to call her but now was not the time. They didn’t know if they had been followed up here, while they were both pretty sure they had lost the wights one could never be too careful. It wasn’t like the wights got tired; they would keep going until they found their prey. Its why the end of the world had been so quick. If you blinked you missed it or you became one of the things ending it. 

Her eyes drifted from the door to the array of taxidermied animals mounted on the wall. It seemed whoever had once owned this cabin was not a very good hunter because there were no large game mounted, just small animals where mounting the animal had to have been far more money and effort than it was worth. Her eyes caught on a small creature hanging above the door and she felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for the thing as well as a nearly overwhelming urge to burn the cabin to the ground. 

She was too tired, both of sheer exhaustion and of this life. She couldn’t remember her own name and yet Gendry kept on pestering her for one even when their lives were on the line. She wasn’t sure what got her mouth to finally move but forcing that one syllable out took nearly everything she had left. 

Her own voice was unrecognizable to her as she whispered, “Weasel.” 

Gendry didn’t respond to her obvious lie and if it wasn’t for the way his back tensed against hers, she would have assumed he hadn’t heard her hoarse whisper. They sat in silence for hours longer until they both deemed it safe to get back on the road, both confused and relived that they had managed to evade death once again. 

XxX 

The question of her name didn’t come up again for so long that she was beginning to think that Gendry had forgotten about his curiosity. Rain was pounding on the roof above them and she curled up closer to the battery powered lantern that they had found in one of the offices like the one they were now holed up in. Even with all the empty space of the building around them they both knew it was safer if they were in the same room. She flipped through an elaborately illustrated children's book on Westeros folklore as he kept watch. 

She was running her fingers over the hundreds of ships pictured behind a lone figure, staring at them with a wonder she had forgotten she was capable of, when Gendry’s voice cut through the silence and her reverie. “What’s your name?” 

She didn’t take her eyes off the page as she replied, her voice slightly louder than it had been the last time she had spoken but still barely more than a breath, “Nymeria.” 

Gendry sighed and she turned to the next page, her eyes taking in the pictures of three soaring dragons as she wondered if there was enough space in her pack for the book. 

XxX 

Just as they didn’t bother to keep track of time, they didn’t bother to keep track of seasons. She knew it was summer judging by the way that her shirt was sticking between her shoulder blades. They were holed up in the ruins of an old castle while Gendry healed. They had run out of gas while being pursued by a group of nine. It was only pure luck that they were both still alive and that the spear that had been thrust into Gendry’s side didn’t hit anything important. 

She would have expected the castle to be crawling with the creatures, the white walkers as Gendry liked to call them, but so far, she had yet to see anything. She kept Gendry in one of the few rooms that still had four walls and she patrolled the castle and its grounds several times a day before returning to his room and sleeping in front of the door. She found a book about the castle in the giftshop, as well as a large supply of water bottles and enough chips to make themselves sick off of. According to the book the castle, Harrenhal, was thought to be haunted. She had yet to see evidence of that but sometimes when she prowled the castle hallways she felt like the book was right in a sense. She was the ghost of Harrenhal. 

Gendry healed slowly but he healed. It seemed that the rumors of hauntings had kept the living from coming to the castle and the giftshop had been untouched as had the employee break room. The food and water she found there kept her from having to leave Gendry to scout for supplies although she would have to leave him to find gas and go back for their bikes where they had abandoned them at the side of the road. 

She planned to leave in the early light of dawn so she lay in front of the door and hoped that sleep would come for her. She wasn’t nervous about being out there on her own, she had done it for so long it felt like breathing to her. She found with some surprise that she was nervous to leave Gendry behind even though he was now healed enough to stand and even walk up and down the stairs without his stiches ripping. It was a new feeling for her and she found it extremely unsettling. 

She had thought that Gendry was asleep but there was a rustling as he shifted on the bed she had made for him. The second she heard him move she knew what he was going to say even before he did it. “What’s your name?” 

For a moment she considered not saying anything and pretending that she was still asleep but that felt like cowardice to her. Syrio had told her several times that this was a world where only the brave would survive. It was strange how easy it was to remember Syrio when so much of her life was still only shadows and fog, including her own name. 

She ran her tongue over her lips and she could still taste the salt from the chips lingering there. Her mind had gone completely blank at the taste and so she offered the only word she could think of as her name. “Salty.” 

She could feel Gendry’s sigh like it came from her own lungs. 

XxX 

The bikes weren’t there when she went back for them and she found herself glad that she had decided to see what kind of shape they were in before she spent hours looking for gas. For a wild moment she thought that the wights had learned how to use the bikes and taken them for themselves before she realized that she was being ridiculous. The bikes being gone meant that her and Gendry were not in fact the last people left alive. Instead of joying her the thought sent a chill so cold up her spine that she sprinted back to Harrenhal, convinced that when she got there Gendry would be gone or worse. He looked up at her startled as she burst through the door and she could not mask the relief she felt to see him alive and unharmed. 

Gendry took one look at her and cursed. “The bikes?” he asked warily, like he already knew the answer. She shook her head no and he cursed again before flopping back onto his back. “We’ll find something else.” he told the ceiling, not needing to look at her to know she was nodding in agreement. 

It took them three towns but eventually they found a car, rusted and faded but that purred when Gendry finally fiddled with the wires under the steering wheel enough. The car was much quieter than the bikes and as much as she knew she would miss the air wiping in her face she knew the car was much more practical. 

The car was also nice because once they hid it from sight of the road and listened to make sure no wights were still on their trail they didn’t have to go look for somewhere else to sleep at night. The car was more than big enough for the both of them to sleep in comfortably. Whoever was going to drive the next day slept in the driver’s seat and whoever had just finished driving got to stretch out in the back. It wasn’t long before she was able to hotwire the car faster than Gendry was. He grumbled about it but she knew he was secretly impressed. 

After watching her do it one morning he turned the dial on the stereo’s volume down. The only CD in the car had been _Discos Greatest Hits: Volume Three_ and they had listened to it so many times she could hear it in her sleep. 

“What’s your name?” Gendry asked curiously, his blue eyes searching her face like he would be able to see the letters of her name spelled out in her eyes. She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze; she couldn’t remember the last time he had asked her that question while looking at her. 

She felt an overwhelming urge to get him to stop looking at her so she said the first word that came into her head. “Nan.” 

She avoided looking at him so that she wouldn’t have to see the look of disappointment on his face but she knew it was there all the same. 

XxX 

While she knew that every person left alive were not all going to be as kind and trusting as Gendry had been to her it was still a shock when the next time they ran into living people they pointed guns at their heads. 

She wasn’t sure what all they wanted, probably everything her and Gendry had to offer and then some, she was too busy tuning them out. There were only two men so at the very least it was a fair fight. She had a feeling that they only snuck up on them because despite Gendry’s massive size she was small and likely mistaken for a child or at least not as a threat. 

After they yelled themselves blue in the face and waved their guns around (guns she was beginning to suspect were empty) and got no reaction from either her or Gendry the man standing in front of her turned to face his partner in exasperation and Arya took her chance. Her sword was through his throat before he had gotten two words out. His friend’s eyes went wide and he swung his gun to point at Arya but Gendry hit him hard from the side and knocked him to the floor. Arya was on him in an instant and he quickly met the same end as his friend. 

Panting as if she had just been in a huge fight she leaned against the wall and sank to the floor, staring straight ahead so that she didn’t have to look at the bodies in front of her. There was a soft rustling at her side and Gendry kneeled down in front of her, effectively blocking her view of the two corpses she had just made. They needed to burn the bodies soon or they were going to be adding to the shitstorm that was their world. She looked up, expecting to see judgement in Gendry’s gaze but his blue eyes were remarkably clear. He reached up a hand as if he was going to touch her before he hesitated and dropped it back to his side. 

“What’s your name?” he asked softly, clearly hoping to distract her. She let out a huff that was a cross between a laugh and sigh at the question. Both sounds were unusual for her, as was a mixture of both. Her and Gendry both started at her making any sound at all. 

She kept her eyes on Gendry’s as she answered, her voice unwavering. “Mercy.” 

XxX 

The smell of smoke and burning flesh lingered in her nose for a very long time, even after they scrounged up fresh clothes and found a small lake for them to clean themselves up in. She wasn’t sure if the smell was lingering on her or just in her memory but sometimes, she thought she saw Gendry sniffing the air like he could still smell it too. 

Those men were not the first people she had killed and she knew that they would not be the last. That was the world they lived in, not only did they have to hope that the dead didn’t kill them they had to hope the living didn’t too. Personally, she thought that there would be a lot more living people in the world if they would all stop killing each other and helping the dead out. 

Not that she was really one to talk. 

Winter had come and it was much harsher than it had been last year but as Gendry reminded her, they were also further north. They didn’t drive with a map or any sense of purpose, Gendry had already told her he didn’t have anywhere left to go and when he asked her if she did, she just shrugged. No One didn’t have anywhere special to her and even though she felt like No One less and less these days she still didn’t feel like herself. She couldn’t remember who that was. 

They followed whatever roads were clear and still intact and drove as far as the gas they had would get them. Eventually the roads became too dangerous for them to keep driving on so they scouted out a house on the edge of a town and gathered as many supplies as they could from the neighboring houses. They hid the car a few blocks away but where they could still see it from the top story of their winter home and settled in to wait the winter out. 

The snow fell unendingly for days at a time. Once it got high enough that their footprints wouldn’t be covered easily, they stopped going outside, unwilling to have any signs that pointed to them. The snow looked to be up past her knees when a soft scratching drew their attention away from the game they were playing. It was Scrabble and while she didn’t remember playing it before, she knew the rules without Gendry having to teach her and had beaten him every time they played. He preferred Monopoly and usually beat her at that one, although in part that was because she often grew disinterested halfway through. 

She drew her sword at the sound of the scratching and Gendry gripped his hammer as they walked to the door. They both peeked through the cracks of the boards they had placed on the windows on either side of the door and Arya saw nothing but swirling snow. Gendry whispered that he couldn’t see anything and the scratching sound came again. 

“Do you think it’s a trap?” Gendry whispered, peering at her in the gray light. This far from the candles they had lit by their game board his face was a study of shadows. She shrugged before slowly shaking her head. They hadn’t left the house for long enough that no one would know they were in there. Gendry looked at her for a long moment before gesturing that he was going to open the door. She nodded and shifted into a fighting stance. 

Gendry unlocked the several locks they had placed on the door and lifted the wooden beam they kept stretched across it before slowly easing it open. Whatever had been scratching on it had gone quiet on the other side. He had barely opened the door three inches when a small form shoved itself in through the gap and Gendry shut the door quickly as she looked down at in wonder as Gendry secured the door. 

“Where in Seven Hells did she come from?” Gendry asked as he knelt down to look at the shaking bundle of fur huddling at their feet. She shook her head she knelt down and reached out a hand to the small kitten that mewed a pitiful meow as it huddled into itself like it deeply regretted whatever instinct had led to it scratching on their door. 

“We need to get it warm before it freezes to death.” Gendry mused as he carefully scooped the shaking kitten up into his hands. The kitten looked so small in his palms it was almost comical. 

They wrapped the kitten in a fluffy towel and fed it warm evaporated milk, which neither knew if was good for kittens but was the only food they had to offer it. Despite the fact that the house had three bedrooms Gendry and her had been sharing a bed, it was safer if they were both in the same place was her reasoning but Gendry’s was more practical. They couldn’t light a fire as the smoke would draw unwanted attention so this way they kept each other warm with body heat. That night when they went to sleep Gendry rested the little kitten between them and it fell asleep almost immediately. 

Their eyes met across the pillows and Gendry smiled at her, his smiles were so rare and blinding that the sight of it made her heart speed up. 

“I wonder where she came from.” he mused softly, as if he was scared his voice would wake their new roommate. She shook her head; she had peeked out all of the windows at their surrounding area and had seen no signs of other cats nor any pawprints to suggest which way she had come from. The snow was so deep she was beginning to suspect she had been born on the porch although that didn’t tell her where the mother had gone to, or any other surviving kittens. There had been no more scratches on the door. 

Even though the kitten was so small and she knew it was likely just in her head the bed felt warmer than it ever had that night. She awoke feeling more refreshed than she had felt in a long time and when Gendry stirred at her movements she could tell he felt the same. The little kitten still lay nestled between them, its little paws twitching as it dreamed. 

Gendry shifted again and she kept her eyes on the kitten, already knowing what he was going to ask. 

“What’s your name?” 

This time she was ready for him and the word was coming before he even finished his question. “Cat.” 

The word brought an image back to her, so sharp and so sudden that it was only years of learning not to make any sound that kept her from gasping aloud. A stern-faced woman with long brown was looking down at her with her hands on her hips in annoyance. Gendry was saying something to her but she couldn’t hear him over the sound of her own pulse pounding in her ears. 

That woman was her mother. She wasn’t sure how she knew that she just did and with such a certainty that she had no doubt that it was true. Not only that, but her mother’s name was Cat. The knowledge that she had a mother was making her head spin. It had been so long since she remembered her, since she remembered anyone from her family that the thought of her was making her dizzy. How many other people had she forgotten? How many others had No One locked away? 

She leaned back against the pillow and clenched her eyes tight. She could feel the fog beginning to lift and she wasn’t sure if that made her want to brush it away or cling to it tighter. 

XxX 

The first dead body she ever saw was her father who was coincidently also the first person she ever saw die. She had gone with him, somewhere very far from home for a reason she could no longer remember. They were there when the first outbreaks began and in the middle of a very crowded and overpopulated city. Not exactly the ideal place to be when the dead stop staying dead and decide all they want to do is kill anything living. 

More people meant more dead which meant more dying which meant it was all one big circular never-ending shitstorm. 

It wasn’t just her and her father that went to the city, by the time the snow was beginning to melt she could remember that too. The redhead was there, her sister she realized after far too many days spent puzzling over her presence in her memory. Her face was still nothing but shadows and she could not remember her name but considering that she couldn’t remember her own name she wasn’t that surprised. 

She could remember the scream that tore from her throat as she watched an impossibly tall wight behead her father on the stairs of the historic sept and she could remember the bald man who passed by and grabbed her hand, forcing her to run. She could remember fleeing the city with that man, Syrio, who taught her how to wield the sword she still carried and how to survive in this new twisted world. Who taught her that fear cuts deeper than swords. Who by the time she watched die she was no longer keeping track of how many dead bodies she had seen or how people she had seen killed. Whose death had caused a heavy fog to fall over her that led to her becoming No One. 

She could remember all of this now with startling clarity but try as she might she could not remember what fate had befallen her sister. 

Most of winter she spent sitting on the top floor and watching the snow fall through a crack in the boards both hoping to remember something of her life before and praying that she didn’t. It didn’t matter who she had been because that wasn’t who she was now. Gendry didn’t seem to share that philosophy with her and he liked to tell her stories about how he grew up, about his mother and his friend Hot-Pie. It never bothered him that she didn’t respond, he knew when he told her the stories he had her complete attention. 

They named the cat Nala, or rather Gendry suggested the name and she nodded. She proved to be an endless source of entertainment and they spent most of winter watching her bat at the yarn they had tied up to make toys for her. 

At night the three of them curled up in the same bed, Nala usually sleeping on one of their pillows curled around their heads. Gendry told her one night that he had heard that was where most of their body heat escaped from so she was likely warmest up there. She didn’t know if that was true and had no way of checking but she liked the now familiar warm weight against the top of her head so she didn’t really care what the reason behind Nala’s favored sleeping position was. 

As the snow began to melt they began to make a plan for what to do next. Well Gendry talked and she nodded or shook her head no. They were almost through their food stash and they needed to find some cat food for Nala rather than keep feeding her what scraps they had that they thought were safe for cats. They were lucky they found so much tuna fish in their hunting. 

Their car was still where they had left it although Gendry was worried about what kind of state it would be in after sitting all winter without being started once. Whenever he got too far into one of his worried rants she would always lean over and place a hand on his arm to calm him down. He always stumbled to a stop after that like her barest touch made him forget how to speak. She hoped not, between the two of them one of them needed to be able to talk. 

They were laying in bed one night, the room pitch black and silent except for Nala’s purring where she lay curled at the top of Gendry’s head when his hand brushed hers under the blankets. She considered pulling away but some instinct made her move her hand closer, turning her palm to thread her fingers through his. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt someone else’s skin, every time she had grabbed his arm there was layers of clothing between them. This felt different, this felt raw. 

“Will you please tell me your name?” Gendry whispered and she shut her eyes tight at the word ‘please’. Didn’t he realize that she would tell him if she knew it? 

She squeezed his hand tighter as she cast around for the first name she could think of and hoped she was right. The word came out of her in a rush, almost as if she was cursing. “Beth.” 

Gendry’s fingers curled tightly around hers for a brief moment. “No, it's not.” he whispered, sounding more certain than she was. Even though it was dark and she knew he couldn’t see her she nodded anyway. 

XxX 

By some miracle Gendry got the car to run again. It involved a can of oil, a lot of fiddling and several curse words that she had never heard before but he got it to work. They bundled in with their belongings and Nala sat perched on the dashboard, looking out at the world in wonder as they pulled away from the place that had been their home for so long. 

The thought of home began to consume her. Just as she had known she had a mother and a father she knew she had to have a home out there somewhere. She wished she could remember what it was called or where it was so that she could lead them there. She would like to see it again, maybe if she did that she could get some answers or at least feel at peace with her lack of them. 

The passage of time was marked by Nala’s growth and the gas and food they had to find. Her dreams began to get more vivid and the ghosts she had been seeing for years were slowly creeping closer to her in the shadows. Syrio was there, whispering in her ear to stop being afraid. She would always wake up when he said this, unsure if he meant to stop being afraid of the ghosts or of seeing who they were. 

Gendry seemed to sense that her mind was elsewhere because he stopped pressing her for her name. She was both relieved that he wasn’t asking her and afraid that if he didn’t ask her anymore than she would never remember who she was. That she would remain No One forever. 

They touched each other more now, shoulder taps to get each other’s attention or holding hands while they drove. One time Gendry had even reached over to brush her hair out of her eyes. She wasn’t sure what all of the touching meant, she wasn’t sure that it had to mean anything. He was still Gendry and she was still, well, whoever the hell she was. He was still the man who had taken a chance on a stranger and she was still the woman who nursed him back to health. The touching didn’t change who they were to each other. 

As they traveled, she began to start seeing flashes of images; a large snow-covered lawn, a dog happily wagging its tail, a room filled to the brim with books. It wasn’t until after she had several of these flashes that she realized that they weren't just images, they were memories. The strangest things would cause them to come to her; once it was the barking of dogs and another it was the smell of lemons. The memories never showed her anything that helped her remember who she was or where she had come from but she still clung tight to each one as if it was the most cherished gift she had ever gotten. In a way, they were. 

It was in a gas station when she got the first memory that made her have hope that who she had been was still inside her somewhere, that she could find it if she just looked hard enough. Gendry was filling up the car while she looked for supplies and something to use for a bandage. She had gotten in a scrap with a wight earlier that day and their weapon had cut her arm as they fought. It bled pretty bad but it wasn’t deep enough to need stiches. Still, she would prefer a better bandage than an old shirt. She wouldn't mind something to clean the wound either. Who knew what kind of crap had been on that blade. 

She was toying through the mess of things on the floor when she pushed a candy bar wrapper off of a map with her shoe. She knelt to pick it up, her fingers shaking for a reason she couldn’t understand. The map was for a city called Winterfell and she ran her finger over each of the letters in the word as she felt some of the fog in her mind burn away. 

Her eyes didn’t leave the map as her lips formed the word, “Arry.” 

She could feel in her heart that wasn’t quite right, that wasn’t her name, but she also knew that it was a hell of a lot closer than she had been before. 

XxX 

She handed the map to Gendry as she approached the car and just as she had known he would he knew that meant she wanted to go there. She was thankful that he didn’t ask her why even though she could tell the question was burning his tongue from being held back. 

As they got closer and closer to Winterfell the memories came back to her more and more, each one longer and more vivid than the last. They were less than two hundred miles away when Gendry told her to stop the car in the middle of the deserted freeway. The only other cars were rusted over, many missing wheels or their hoods propped open from where engine parts had been pilfered. 

“It's not safe for you to drive right now.” Gendry said stubbornly when she glared at him to show she wasn’t tired and could keep driving. She hesitated for only a moment before pulling to a stop. She hadn’t been aware that her onslaught of memories was so apparent on her face but Gendry was used to reading her facial expressions by now. He likely knew her face better than she did. 

They had perfected switching places without getting out of the car months ago and Arya shimmied over the gear consul and his lap as he moved underneath her to take the driver’s seat. They both checked the windows to make sure there wasn’t any wights about to rush them as they got situated and buckled in. 

The only sound between them was the purr of the engine and very faint disco music. Gendry had gotten too harsh trying to turn the stereo off one day and now they could no longer change the volume or turn it off. 

Nala climbed into her lap as Gendry drove, his hands tense on the steering wheel. She didn’t think it was because he was mad that he was driving but because he didn’t know what was going on with her. She wished that she could reassure him somehow but without knowing what was going on herself she didn’t know what to say. 

She closed her eyes as more memories came to her, with each passing mile they got stronger. She had brothers, she knew that now. Five of them, two younger and three older. Out of all of her siblings only one of them looked like her. Her fingers closed around the hilt of her sword and she suddenly sat upright with a gasp. 

That brother had given her this sword before she went south as a present to an inside joke between them. He was her favorite brother and his name was Jon. He used to mess up her hair and let her hide in his room when her mother was mad at her. She closed her eyes tight as she remembered huddling under his bed and trying not to giggle while her mother tore through the house looking for her, screaming her name. 

Her eyes snapped open as the sound of her own name reverberated around in her memory. She turned to look at Gendry with wonder as she spoke at a normal volume for the first time in years, her voice hoarse but strong. 

“Arya. My name is Arya.” 

Gendry slammed his foot on the brake and Arya had to clutch Nala to her lap so that she didn’t fly into the dashboard. The car shuddered to a stop and he shoved it into park before turning to look at her with wide eyes. She met his eyes unflinchingly, her heart pounding in her chest from the abrupt stop. 

His eyes searched hers as if he would be able to see all the answers in them and he must have seen the truth of what she was saying in her gaze because he let out a long shuddering breath like she had just sucker punched him. A surprised burst of laughter tore from his chest as he ran his hand over his face before he dropped it to look at her again. This time there was a wide smile on Gendry’s face as he reached up to brush a lock of hair out of her eyes. 

“Nice to meet you Arya.” he whispered, his hand cupping her face softer than she would have thought possible. The muscles in her face felt weird and it took her a moment to realize that she was smiling at him. She leaned forward to wrap her arms around his chest and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head as he wrapped his arms tight around her. 

Tomorrow they would reach Winterfell and they would go to the house she had grown up in with her parents and her sister and her brothers. Tomorrow she might be reunited with them or she might have to face them looking at her with unearthly blue eyes. Tomorrow she might find her childhood home burned to the ground or devoid of life with no sign as to where her family might have gone. But those were problems for tomorrow and in this world, one could not guarantee that they would get that. 

Tonight was all that mattered to Arya. Her belly was full and she had Nala purring on her lap. Gendry’s arms were wrapped tight around her back and he was running his fingers softly through her hair. For the first time in a long time there was no fog shrouding her and she felt more clearheaded than she could ever remember feeling. 

No matter what they might face tomorrow Arya knew that they would face it together, just as they had faced so many things in the past. But Arya knew the real truth was that it didn’t matter what happened tomorrow because it hadn’t happened yet. What mattered was right now, what mattered was that moment. 

And that moment was enough.


End file.
